What are the reasons for low use of graphene quantum dots in immunosensing of cancer biomarkers?

•We present the state of the art of GQDs-based immunosensors employed in cancer diagnosis.•Their analytical performance was compared identifying their advantages and limitations.•Approaches to improve the analytical performance of GQDs-based immunosensors are reported.

Graphene quantum dots-based immunosensors have recently gained importance for detecting antigens and biomarkers responsible for cancer diagnosis. This paper reports a literature survey of the applications of graphene quantum dots for sensing cancer biomarkers. The survey sought to explore three questions: (1) Do graphene quantum dots improve immunosensing technology? (2) If so, can graphene quantum dots have a critical, positive impact on construction of immuno-devices? And (3) What is the reason for some troubles in the application of this technology? The number of published papers in the field seems positively answer the first two questions. However additional efforts must be made to move from the bench to the real diagnosis. Some approaches to improve the analytical performance of graphene quantum dots-based immunosensors through their figures of merit have been also discussed.